Contributions of honeyports to network security

Abstract: A honeypot is an attractive computer target placed inside a network to lure the attackers into it. There are many advantages of this technology, like, information about attacker's tools and techniques can be fingerprinted, malicious traffic can be diverted away from the real target etc. With the increased activity from the blackhat community day by day, honeypots could be an effective weapon in the network security administrator's armor. They have been studied rigorously during the past few years as a part of the security industry's drive to combat malicious traffic. While the whitehats are trying to make honeypots stealthier, blackhats are coming up with techniques to identify them (therefore nullifying any further use) or worse, use them in their favor. The game is on. The goal of this thesis is to study different architectural issues regarding honeypot deployment, various stages in utilizing honeypots like forensic analysis etc. Other concepts like IDSs and firewalls which are used in conjunction with honeypots are also discussed, because security is about cooperation among different security components. In the security industry, it is customary for whitehats to watch what blackhats are doing and vice versa. So the thesis discusses recent techniques to defeat honeypots and risks involved in deploying honeypots. Commercial viability of honeypots and business cases for outsourcing honeypot maintenance are presented. A great interest from the security community about honeypots has propelled the research and resulted in various new and innovative applications of honeypots. Some of these applications, which made an impact, are discussed. Finally, future directions in research in honeypot technology are perused.